Is your web design killing your conversion rates? Unless you’ve experimented with another design, how do you know?

It’s simple: you don’t.

The smallest changes can mean a world of difference for your conversion rates. Not buying it? Look at past case studies: Changing a button’s color from green to red led to a 21 percent performance rate for Performable. Soocial experienced a 4.2 percent conversion boost just by changing its site text from “Sign Up” to “Sign Up: It’s Free.”

Until you test your site’s design for yourself, you’ll never know which piece of your design is crippling your conversion rates. Like anything in life, the first step is the hardest: letting go of your current site design.

1. Let Go of Any Attachments to Your Current Web Design

Sure, that web design may have been on your site since you were a fledgling startup, but it’s time for your design to leave the nest. Let it all go: the color schemes, the content, the font, the images and so on. Nothing is sacred, nothing is off limits. William Faulkner famously said that “in writing, you must kill all your darlings.” Get ready to kill all your web design darlings, friends.

If you can’t step back and be objective, it’s time to bring in the big guns. Hiring an online marketing company can provide you with honest, no-strings-attached feedback. They’ll be able to identify common trouble spots and suggest changes without an emotional attachment.

2. Experiment with Google Website Optimizer

Get intimately familiar with the Google Website Optimizer tool: it’s about to become your best friend. This free tool allows you to experiment between two different site designs by sending random traffic to both sites and reporting analytics on both results.

Want a simple control (your current design) and variable (a tweaked design) experiment? Choose the A/B experiment. Want something more controlled and complex? Go with the multivariate experiment.

3. Look For Common Optimizers

You don’t have to start from scratch, either. Consider the following improvements other companies have made (according to this infographic by zippycart.com):

Simply adding an arrow to applicable buttons can lead to a 20 percent improvement in your conversion rate.

More than half of the top Internet retailers use “Add to Cart” over other popular purchasing messages, including “Add to Shopping Bag,” “Add to Shopping Cart,” or “Add to Basket.”

Adding security trust badges, such as those from Verisign, can bring a major boost to your conversion rates.

If in doubt, strip web design down to its most basic purpose: to direct and funnel web visitors into a chosen pathway. Because at the end of the day, your site design’s main purpose isn’t to look “pretty” or “sleek” or “modern” or “cool.” Its job is to bring clear results for your company. When it’s time to count your profits, it doesn’t matter how pretty your typography is — what matters is that your business is growing and thriving.

Until you test and retest that design, you’ll be forever underestimating your site’s true potential.

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